When, at 11:20 PM on October 31st, 1939, Indiana Railroad Train #35 pulled out of the Louisville Interurban Terminal, this was the beginning of the end of through electric Interurban rail service between Louisville and Indianapolis – a service that began in 1908.

As the orange car with dark green roof emerged from the terminal, it turned east onto Jefferson Street, continued south on Third Street, east onto Prospect Alley, south on Brook Street, east on Madison Street, north on Wenzel Street and onto the approach to the Big Four Bridge. On this final trip, a large wreath hung around the big interurban headlight.

Up to the very last, Indiana Railroad was a high speed operation. On a 9.1 mile stretch in south central Indiana between Columbus and Azalia the regular schedule called for cars to cover this distance in 9 minutes for an average speed of 60.6 mph. Speeds over 70 mph were necessary to meet this schedule. Quick acceleration of these 1930’s era electric cars made this possible.

So, what killed the interurban? Among other things, Henry Ford and his Model T.

Great article that reveals all the possibilities when a transit project is done right. The key element in any major premium transit project is permanence. The economic, social, and environmental co-benefits illustrated through short visual bites in the linked article are only realized when the community has confidenceits not going away. Rail is best suited for this kind of commitment but BRT and Rapid Bus systems can demonstrate permanence with investments in high quality fixed supporting infrastructure like functional stations at destinations along the way and at both ends, dedicated guideways, transit pass kiosks and more.

Successful transit is close to home, frequent, reliable, and not only gets me where the action is but stimulates action near by. It doesn’t necessarily matter what kind of wheels it has.

CART is a proud promotional partner for the Louisville Solar Tour once again in 2014! This year’s tour features 34 sites with solar installers at two locations to deep dive into the technology options. To download the 2014 Solar Tour Guidebook please click here.

While solar energy is not directly related to transportation solutions, any future electric rail or trolley system will be agnostic to the source of the electricity and the more renewable energy on line will improve the air quality and greenhouse gas emissions performance of the system.

When: Saturday October 11, 2014 from 10 AM to 3 PM

Where: Throughout Louisville. Mostly inside the Watterson on the east side but there are many excellent sites to visit in other locations including Bernheim. Three opportunities for your Tour Experience:

Guided Bus Tour

Guided Bicycle Tour

Self Guided Tour

Bike and Bus tours begin at 12:00 noon at the APCD parking lot at the corner of Breckenridge St. and Barret Ave.

Once you leave the Eastern Seaboard public transportation in the United States is a local affair. The type of service you find in a city depends on the interplay among several factors including total population, population density, geography of roads and terrain, demographic patterns, development patterns, local and state politics and values, and local agency funding structure. In this post, I use a tool published by the US Census Bureau called Distance Profiles to analyze potential peer cities. The Distance profile provides a cross section of Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) populations that allows us to visually identify cities with very similar population distributions, geographic size, and density distributions. Using this tool we can make an informed comparison of Louisville’s transit system and those of true peer cities.

Once we identify our peer cities we have to be careful. All of our peer cities’ transit systems are somewhat different and it doesn’t necessarily mean one city’s public transit system is more or less effective. Measurements of “effectiveness” must be based on the public transit values that each local community chooses for itself. Cities always make tradeoffs between coverage and ridership within a fixed budget. A city that values coverage will design a network that tries to deliver public transit opportunities to every corner of the service area. A city that values ridership will concentrate their resources on the high volume corridors to try and deliver maximize ridership. The former provides lots of access to service but with very low frequency. The latter leaves many areas unserved but provides much more frequent service along selected corridors. All cities try to balance these goals based on additional values including social service concerns, the desire to influence development patterns, mitigation of pollution, and congestion reduction, and fall somewhere along a continuum from maximum coverage to maximum ridership. We can also look at a peer city’s budget and facilities which will tell us more about the community’s public transit values and perhaps operational efficiency.

We will address these ideas in a later post, but before we can do that, we need to identify our peer cities based on their Distance Profiles. Then we can evaluate their transit systems and infer the community values illustrated by their transit system choices and decide what if any elements of that system we can emulate.

Population Profiles

The Distance Profile includes two metrics: population by distance from city hall and population weighted density by distance from city hall. The results for each MSA are plotted on line graphs where each point represents a circular band of land one mile wide with each successive band radiating outward from the city center. The geometry of this metric results in each successive band having a greater area. The resulting graph has a peak at the band with the greatest population or density then falls off as the bands contain more and more rural areas. Take a look at Louisville’s graphs. Continue reading →

In an unfortunate example of the right hand not talking to the left, in the dark of night on June 9th, two six foot sections of double rail streetcar

Cut Streetcar Rail at 38th and Market

tracks were destroyed to make room for faux cobblestone crosswalks. You would think that city construction crews would have been briefed about what NOT to do when archaeological artifacts are encountered. It is not clear what the rules are about dealing with the tracks but indications are that city officials do care about these assets.

In an email exchange between John Owen, candidate for the 5th district Metro Council seat and public works official Dirk Gowan, Gowan said:

“I apologize for the confusion on the tracks, it was my responsibility to assure the tracks were destroyed, and assure you that the extension of the project will not destroy other sections of the track.”

A typo? I think he meant …”to assure the tracks were NOT destroyed.” Anyway, we hope so.

A Legacy streetcar called “Petunia” on a restored section of tracks in Dallas.

It is not beyond imagining that someday Metro Louisville will want to add streetcars to the urban landscape for all the right reasons. Dallas and other cities have been able to save millions in capital expense by reusing legacy tracks.

Therefore preservation of these valuable assets should be the rule. And the rule should be codified through the Landmarks Commission. In any case a professional development workshop for public works construction crews on proper treatment of archaeological assets is certainly in order.

Louisville. The Walmart property located at the corner of 18th (Dixie Highway) and Broadway falls within a Traditional Workplace Form District, a designation defined by Louisville’s Land Development Code. According to the LOJIC Online Map, this Traditional Workplace is adjacent to the Broadway Traditional Marketplace Corridor and in close proximity to the Town Center Form District centered at 28th and Broadway and Traditional Neighborhood Form Districts both north and south of the Traditional Workplace. The Traditional Workplace Form District is described as follows:

“The Traditional Workplace Form District applies to older established industrial and employment areas that contain primarily small-to-medium scale industrial and employment uses. These uses are often historically integrated with or adjacent to residential neighborhoods, especially traditional neighborhoods. District standards are designed to encourage adaptive reuse and investment in these areas while ensuring compatibility with adjacent uses and form districts, to ensure adequate access and transit service, and to retain distinctive land uses and patterns such as connected street grids.” (LDC 5.2.5)Continue reading →

The Move Louisville project began as the outcome of massive public input to Mayor Greg Fischer’s Vision Louisville project. A top community priority based on the number of public comments received by the city was for a better metro area transportation system. The mayor’s office of Economic Development and Innovation is the lead department and Metro Government is investing $775,000 ($600,000 federal grant, $125,000 city matching funds, $25,000 from TARC) to develop a comprehensive transportation infrastructure plan including roads, public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure. At this time there are over six hundred discrete projects on the candidate project map. The implementation timeline on the Vision Louisville website says <5 years to completion but considering the number and scope of potential projects, implementation is likely to stretch out to 20 years with projects ranging from bicycle lanes to freeway relocations and mass transit. It’s not that any single project would take 20 years but there are so many and with a comprehensive city-wide scope, the requisite public battles over individual plans, and the competition for limited local, state and federal money progress won’t be quick. We will be guided by the Move Louisville plan for a long time. On the other hand, if the city’s intention is to only select projects that can be built in five years then most of the ambitious projects will not make the cut. We will know soon.

The following is a guest post from Clarence Hixson, CART’s Legal Counsel. Oral arguments appealing the 6th District’s dismissal of CART’s law suit will take place before the US 6th District Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on June 25th. We asked Mr. Hixson for a status report and asked him a couple of key questions. Below are his responses.

Why did the Appeals Court agree to hear oral arguments?

The final decisions of Federal District Court, ( in this case Judge Heyburn’s Final Order earlier this year dismissing all 20 of CART’s claims made in the Complaint) can be appealed to the Court of Appeals as a matter of right. The appeal has to be taken in compliance with federal civil Rule 4 and other rules providing a time limit for filing. CART’s appeal is not frivolous and states the jurisdiction and cause of action under the Administrative Procedures Act, NEPA and Title VI. Generally, the Appeal alleges that Judge Heyburn committed error in dismissing all the NEPA Claims and in denying the Motion for a Trial on the issue of intentional discrimination on the basis of race
by the decisions the states made and the subsequent project approval by FHWA.

All through Judge Heyburn’s Opinion he referred to the LSIORBP as an exceptionally significant project: The Court had serious questions as to CART’s standing through member Mattie Jones to make discrimination claims, but, “Again, due to the public nature of this suit and the import of CART’s Title VI claims, the Court will nevertheless address their substance.” Continue reading →

The Houston bus transit system is being redesigned to take advantage of inefficiencies in the system. The project is supposed to result in a system that reaches more people, increases headway on more routes and can be accomplished at no additional cost. Can the same be accomplished in Louisville? Is our bus system redundant and are their glaring inefficiencies? Read this article and let us know what you think.